Ceratti,
a traditional Brazilian maker of mortadella, has developed a light
mortadella that, since 2005, has been certified halal by the Muslim
Federation. The stamp has already guaranteed growth of 35% in the
volume of company sales of the product.

São Paulo – Ceratti meat packing plant, located in the city of
Vinhedo, in the interior of São Paulo, has been trading mortadella
certified halal by the Muslim Federation. The stamp, which guarantees
that the product is approved for consumption among followers of Islam,
has already guaranteed growth of 35% in company sales of the product.
Last year the total produced was 9,000 tonnes of sausages and similar
products.

Mortadella, which is usually produced from pork and which includes
those traditional balls of fat, has been modified to a light option,
with 30% less fat and produced from beef. Production began in 1993. The
halal stamp granted at the end of 2005 boosted sales.

“Certification was very pleasing to consumers who do not eat pork
for religious reasons – Muslims, Adventists and Jews – and to people
who prefer lower calorie products,” stated Mário Ceratti Benedetti, the
company president. According to him, the stamp confers greater
credibility to the products, as it is a guarantee that there is no
other kind of meat in the sausage, apart from beef,” he explains.

According to Benedetti, the search for halal certification was
motivated by a Lebanese importer who visited the Ceratti factory in
2005. “He liked our products and suggested certification as the first
step geared towards the foreign market,” he explained. After that,
according to Benedetti, Ceratti was visited by Arab importers in the
Middle East and North Africa. “We have already been visited by
businessmen from Lebanon, the Emirates and Algeria,” he added.

“We want to export halal mortadella to the Arab countries, where
there are large Muslim populations as we have the approval of a
religious leader who certifies the strict production norms,” said
Bebedetti. According to him, Ceratti still doesn’t export for
buraucratic reasons, but the company is already working on approval of
the plant for sales on the foreign market.

Italian heritage

Ceratti was established by Italian immigrant Giovanni Ceratti, in
1932, in Vila Hiliópolis, in the city of São Paulo (SE Brazil). In the
beginning it was a small butcher that also produced the traditional
Italian cold cuts like Codeguim, Panceta and Zampone. It was all done
in an artistic manner by Giovanni himself. The Italian colony that
lived in São Paulo, missing the products of their country of origin,
soon became clients.

The search for the cold cuts was so large that in a short while,
Giovanni abandoned the sale of fresh meat and dedicated himself
exclusively to the production of cold cuts and sausages. In the 1940s
he already had his own sales force supplying the city of São Paulo and
outskirts.

In the 1950s, Newton Ceratti, Giovanni’s son, became a partner in
the company. In 1953 the slaugherhouse found a new partner, Franco
Benedetti, Giovanni Ceratti’s son-in-law. The company continued
growing, and in the 1960s and the 1970s the slaughterhouse underwent
successive changes to supply the market demand. In 1972, production
started being inspected by the Federal Inspection Service, and the
organisation started to distribute its products on the whole of the
Brazilian territory.

Decades went by, the population of São Paulo grew and the small
butcher became the slaughterhouse that now employs 142 people and has
representatives spread throughout the country. Today the Ceratti line
of products includes mortadellas, hams, sausages and special lines of
smoked meats and hams.